Cannot edit scanned pdfs in Acrobat Standard DC. How can I fix this issue?

Forum|Forum|8 years ago
March 14, 2017
2 replies
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I just got a new laptop from Dell and ordered (and paid for) Acrobat Standard DC on the laptop. I cannot get the "Edit pdf" feature to work properly. I do not have Acrobat Reader on my machine, so using Reader is not the problem. Acrobat Standard is already set as the default opener of pdf files. I can fully edit PDF's created off the web, but cannot edit pdfs scanned by ANY of our office scanners, even after running "recognize text" on the scanned pdf's. After running text recognition, the entire page gets selected as ONE box and I get the below message:

"Acrobat has detected that this page doesn't have editable text. If it is a scanned page, convert it to another format using the Export PDF tool."

**** I do not want to export the page into Word, etc.

**** Do I have to scan the pdf documents remotely, through the Acrobat software itself, instead of using the auto pdf scanning on our office scanners?

**** How can I fix this issue?

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Karl Heinz Kremer

Community Expert

Acrobat Standard only allows you to OCR a document in the "hidden text" format - it will store the text "behind" the scanned image. In Acrobat Pro, you have an option called ClearScan (Acrobat XI and older) or "Editable Text and Images" (Acrobat DC), which actually allows you to edit the text and images in your document. Again, this is not possible with Adobe Acrobat Standard, and there is no way around that. Your options are to either upgrade Acrobat to Acrobat Pro, or to use a 3rd party tool that allows you to convert a scanned document to editable text (I keep Abbyy's FineReader around for OCR jobs that are too challenging for Adobe Acrobat).

This thread from a few days ago has some more information: Re: Editing Text in a Scanned Document

A

acrofan772Author

Participant

Thanks so much, Karl. I wish the tutorial link I supplied made clear that the tutorial instructions only apply to the PRO version.

*** With my Acrobat Standard DC, I AM able to edit pdf's that were downloaded from the web, so I thought one of the Standard settings was off somewhere, and that incorrect setting was keeping me from editing pdf's made from our office scanners.

*** Do you agree that the reason I am able to edit pdf's pulled from the web is because those documents were probably originally composed in software that "Holds" the font information and text?

*** Is there a link where I can find how much it would cost to upgrade from Acrobat DC to Acrobat DC Pro? I bought my Acrobat DC from Dell on a new laptop, so it is not a subscription product.

Karl Heinz Kremer

Community Expert

There are two different types of PDF files when it comes to editing: Scanned (or bitmap) PDF documents, which need to be OCR'ed first, and then it depends on what OCR options you have to determine if you can actually edit the resulting file. With Acrobat Standard, you will have a bitmap based file, but with text "behind" the image that allows you to search, or to highlight information. With Arobat Pro, you could convert to this "editable text & images" format, which would allow you to actually edit the contents. For non-bitmap files, the text in a document is stored as editable text already, and as long as you are allowed to edit these documents (based on the security settings associated with the document), you can edit these files - in both Acrobat Standard and Pro.

I just checked the Adobe site, and cannot find any information about how you could upgrade your Classic (or non-subscription) version of Acrobat DC Standard to Pro. You may want to check with Dell if they offer the upgrade, and if that's not an option, I guess you need to get in touch with Adobe's support: http://helpx.adobe.com/contact.html (don't use any of the "Forum" options, otherwise you will end up here again)

J

JJLAPIN

Participating Frequently

When you scan something that has type and images on it. It is a Raster image and cannot be edited. At least the the Type cannot.

An overall color correction could be done in Photoshop.

The reason you can sometimes edit pdfs you pull off the internet is because it was probably saved out of Illustrator and it is holding all of the fonts and vector images as they were created.